


Brighter Burning Stars

by LorettaFryingPan



Category: Captain America (2011), Thor (2011)
Genre: Community: norsekink, F/M, Immortals loving mortals, Loki's kids always get the short end of the stick, Longing, Norse Mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-12
Updated: 2012-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-31 00:17:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LorettaFryingPan/pseuds/LorettaFryingPan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She loved him (because who could look upon this man and not love him?), in her own way. In the end, that was what made the difference.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brighter Burning Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Written for (and originally posted at) [this prompt](http://norsekink.livejournal.com/7418.html?thread=13851898#t13851898) at norsekink:
> 
> "I am probably setting myself up for a lot of angst and misery here...., but could someone please write a fanific in which Hel is in love?"
> 
> I let my brain run loose, and this is what it produced.

Few are the things capable of calling Hel from her cold, dark domain. One of them is death. And there is much of it to be had on the fields of Europe. She walks among the bodies of the dead and the dying that carpet land that used to thrive with life (an irony that is not lost on her), watches, and wonders. Wonders why these mortals fight and kill each other so. Thinks them foolish.  
(Hel is not known for her kindness.)  
But as her kingdom fills a little bit more every day with fathers, sons, and brothers (and occasionally a mother, sister, daughter with poison in her veins or scars on her limbs and darkness in her eyes), she deigns to visit the realm of the living and bear witness to the calamity that is taking place.  
The grassy plains of France give way to thick coniferous forests, and the scent of death remains. There is an aura of despair about the place, and by and by she reaches the source. An army camp- mostly deserted from the looks of things. In fact, it’s almost completely empty. But soon she hears the murmur of voices, and finds a stage with singing women on it. Most of the soldiers are seated in front of it, but by her count of them there are still a great many more tents than there should be. (She figures the rest of them are out in the field, stargazing with unseeing eyes)  
Oh. It’s one of those “You Ess-Oh” shows. Well. It’s none of her concern. Nor is she interested. She turns to leave, to find another field, when she is struck by light.  
A man steps onto the stage, and she is blinded. It barely registers to her that he is a buffoon, that he has clearly never seen the war he speaks about-he lacks the hollowness in his gaze that the men before him have-all she sees is that he glows.

~*~

_Hel is not weak. She is unflinching, unswerving, and austere._

_That does not mean she does not feel._

_Or that she does not love the light._

~*~

She takes to following this bright man, and learns that his name is Steve, that he is a talented artist, and that he believes in what those soldiers fight for even if he is not allowed to fight himself.  
She learns that he hates when the strong prey on the helpless, and part of her cries out.  
Goddesses should not want mortals. Especially not goddesses who are monsters, and mistresses of the bleakest domain mortals can conceive of. They are simply not allowed such wants.

Hel has always been a contrarian. 

~*~  
It is out of a need to be near his light that Hel follows Steve into the plane with Howard and Peggy, that she wears the skin of a raven as he jumps into the dark forest. And as far as anyone else is concerned, that is all she does. If Steve should happen to be miraculously safe when he lands, if mortars should just happen to curve around him, then who’s to say he isn’t just very lucky? Who’s to say she had a hand in it at all?  
The Queen of the Dead does not do favors for mere mortals.  
But she comes close.

~*~

She meets Bucky (or rather, she sees Bucky. He does not see her) not long later, bound to a table in a hidden part of the base. He is very close to becoming one of hers, so close in fact that when she lets her withered right hand rest on his sternum, he does not shiver. But for the moment, she does not call him. She only steadies him. Bucky’s eyes close, calmed by a presence he cannot see. He lets loose a rattling breath.  
But Steve-oh, how this bright and beautiful man grips her heart-Steve’s stricken face at the sound moves her, and she lets her grave-cold fingers trail off over Bucky’s face and come to a rest on the edge of the table.  
(Then Bucky shivers, because the metal is suddenly as cold as the tundra)  
Steve helps his friend with tender grace, and Hel can watch no more. She can hear the casualties beyond the walls, and the hurt of others was always more attractive to her than the ache in her own sunken chest.

~*~

She is not meant to have such things. That is only part of the problem. Men like Steve are for women like Peggy. She sees the way he looks at the stern agent, the blind admiration and virginal desire painted across his face. He draws her in his books, all dark eyes and heavy curls and symmetry. Her evenness, her smooth pale beauty is what stings Hel the most. Steve spends five minutes sketching Peggy’s mouth, and Hel pokes her tongue against a decayed cheek, worries a withered lip, and thinks herself unworthy. (Her, a queen with emeralds braided in her hair, a mistress of the most arcane arts, a daughter of _Loki_ , is never unworthy)  
So she tears herself from his side, and strolls through fields once more.

~*~

_There are many stories told by the wounded veterans who fought in France. Most of them have to do with their various battles, and no two of them are ever the same.  
With the exception of one. They all speak of a maiden, cloaked in green, who bends over the dying soldiers and whispers to them. Sometimes they can recall fragments of what she said, but their old wounds begin to ache so fiercely that they can no longer speak._

~*~

She is never far from him for long. She is like a plant, turning towards the sun. She will be bent over the corpse of an infantryman, whispering the passwords to the Gate, when she feels him drawing near. She will stand up and cast her vision over a far-off hill in time to see him crest it.  
She reveals herself to him, one day in a village. He is sitting in a small churchyard, and for a moment she drops her glamour. For a moment, she is visible to mortal eyes in all her stark, dark and light glory.  
Steve startles, turns in her direction. She ducks behind a tree.  
“Is someone there?” He asks in halting French. Not because he is afraid- he does not fear as most mortals do- but because he never had a talent for the flowing language. (In these imperfections, these fissures in the gem that Steve is, Hel manages to squirrel away even more affection)  
Hel gathers her magic about her and weaves herself a new skin in the blink of an eye, and steps out as a young woman wearing a blue and yellow dress. Her skin is smooth and even, her hair is a glossy blonde in the afternoon sun. The one thing that remains unchanged is her right eye, vacant and glazed over with cataracts.  
(Perhaps it is a challenge)  
“I apologize, I didn’t see you there. I don’t want to disturb you,” she replies. (The illusion fits snugly and the lie comes easily. She is her father’s daughter, after all.)  
He takes a moment to parse her words then smiles a brilliant smile. A blush rises, unbidden, to her face, but she manages to not fidget.  
“It’s alright, miss. I wouldn’t mind some company, if that’s alright with you.” He pats the sun-warmed bench next to him, and she sits. He is unfailingly polite, keeping his hands neatly folded in his lap over the sketchbook he was working in.  
“You are a soldier?” she asks, and he nods. She turns her head to look at the sketchbook. “And an artist, it seems,” she finishes, a smile on her voice.  
(Her voice has not been so warm in centuries, not since she last saw her kin)  
“I’ve always loved to draw,” he says, humble. “I’m grateful for every chance I get to indulge myself, especially in these times.”  
He turns the conversation away then, and they discuss trifles. Things like the gentle slope of the hills and the wildflowers that carpet the leeward side, their particular tastes in music and art.  
“I’ve always enjoyed sculpture,” she says, “because sculpture tells you what is. There are no lies in marble. You can take it in your hands, and know it without eyes.”  
She is looking away from him, out across the smattering of headstones, but he is looking at her. He seems put off by her answer. But if he has a rejoinder it never leaves his mouth, trapped there by the approach of Howard.  
“Time to go. We’ve gotta move out,” Howard says in English. He looks at Hel (makes an obvious double-take at her dead eye) and tips his hat. “Excuse us miss, but my friend and I must leave,” he says to her. She gives him a wan smile, and shrugs as if to say _what can you do?_ (Hel finds that she enjoys pretending to be this provincial French maiden, and tries to not get too attached to the persona)  
Steve stands up, and she does as well. “It was nice talking to you miss…”  
She holds out her right hand, soft and small in the light of the glamour. “Hélène.” Steve takes it and presses a gentle kiss to the back. “Miss Hélène.”  
“And will you go without telling me your name?” She says. He flushes, obviously embarrassed.  
“Steve,” he says. “Captain Steve Rogers.”  
“Fare you well, Captain. Thank you for everything.” Steve and Howard walk away, and Hel gets just past the church’s gate before she pulls the glamour off and fades from mortal sight.  
Once safely hidden, she clasps her hands to her chest and sighs.

~*~

But that hour in the churchyard, that stolen moment with him was just that-stolen. It was something she should not have allowed herself, and now she is paying for it. Watching Steve and Peggy dance about each other twists in her heart like a screw. She cannot bear to see him turn that bright, nourishing light to one who cannot even see it. But still she watches, still sees him through each battle. (The children of LokI are born to suffer, she thinks) But eventually it becomes too much. She has been allowing him to rule her life, and she will allow it no more. She has become weak, and needy by basking in Steve’s light (a voice in her ear says “love is not weak, love makes you strong”, but she rejects it. A liar can always hear a falsehood.). So she wrenches his hooks from her heart, and bleeding returns to her dark, damp castle.

~*~

Sleetcold is tranquil with its Queen back upon Her throne, and Helheim seems to settle, as though the realm _missed_ her. (It is a strange thing to be missed)  
Baldr kneels and kisses the hem of her dress when she returns, and she is strangely glad to see him. (If he notices how much she aches, how she bleeds, he says nothing.)  
Hel turns her eyes away from Midgard and its battles and its soldiers.  
(Bucky passes through her gates, and she takes dinner with him. She is content to let him speak, when he will. Mostly he speaks of his childhood, and his friendship with Steve. From time to time he seems to flicker, his image shudders as though something is very wrong. She loosens her grip on him the following evening, and loses track of his spirit in her realm. She does not search for him, knows it would be futile. She spends the time instead sewing up the cracks in her heart, but finds she lacks the thread.)

~*~

_It always occurs to her that he could belong to her. If she wanted, she could pluck him from the land of life like an apple from a low-hanging branch.  
She imagines walking through the many forests in Helheim with him, telling the secret stories that only the Monarchs know.  
She imagines entire existences with Steve._

~*~

She greets the morning (or the grey gloaming that counts for morning in Helheim) while bathing in one of the many vast lakes that dot the land. The water is black as ice and does not reflect the dreary sky.  
So to see the pale hand of one of the Norns reaching toward her comes as a small surprise. Within its withered grasp is clasped a thread, which it proffers to the Queen.  
Hel takes it, and the hand slips away, with the vague whisper that accompanies everything the Norns do. She stands in the thigh-deep water, and runs her fingers over the gold thread. It sings her a song she has not heard for some long time.  
She clasps the thread to her bare breast and knows what she must do.

~*~

The waters of the Arctic are very cold indeed, but Hel pays them no mind. She sits on the edge of an ice floe, dangles her feet in the water, and waits.  
Hel is patient. She is not idle, however, so she takes up the thread and her needle, and begins to sew.  
It is little more than a scrap of cloth, emerald velvet taken from one of her old dresses. She embroiders stars and suns and hills with little wildflowers on them.  
By the time she is done, she sees the plane. It crashes into the waves and shatters centuries-old ice not twenty feet from her.  
Hel stands up, sheds her mantle, and dives into the frigid ocean.  
It is time to end this.

~*~

_It is in these quiet moments of reflection and fantasy that Hel always recalls Baldr, quiet and gentle and imprisoned by her side. She generally tries to put her father’s gesture out of her mind, and she usually succeeds.  
But once, she doesn’t.  
And she decides it is far past time for a change._

~*~

It is not hard to find him in the wreckage; he still glows like a star (perhaps, if she were focusing more on her metaphors, she would replace it with _supernova_ ). His shield is slung on his back, and he has curled up like a child in the womb in some primitive, base reaction to the cold and shock.  
She pulls magic from the air, water, and ice (there is such meager supply of it on Midgard, but the sea is old, and still has much power) and swaddles him in it. She wraps him in life, the kind of protection she alone can grant.  
(For just as darkness and light define each other, so too do life and death relate)  
Secure in the knowledge that he will survive, and that he will be safe until the Norns call his thread back again, she takes her leave. A long embrace and a gentle kiss, and Hel is gone.  
Steve sleeps, with the quiet lullabies of the sea and old magic singing in his ear.

~*~

_There is a war, and a new world is birthed in its aftermath. Mortals take up helms and swords, defend one another from greater threats. A small few gather, and plan.  
It is they who encounter the crashed plane, and drill inside it. Such is the world they live in that when they come upon the frozen man, they have the technology to awaken him.  
But they are mortal, and cannot sense the cloak of magic about him, one that never fades._

 

~*~

**END.**

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the song "Kites" by Dessa.


End file.
